| Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large |
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 After being off air the week of 4/19, TMI was back. However, I was not. I got skunked! Not a single joke of mine made it to air. Were they all bad? Did my email wind up in their spam folder? Was my less-than-pandering stories of whole the sausage was made make me a person non-grata with the producers? Who knows. However, I got a couple in Monday's video, so maybe it was the spam filter scenario. Fingers crossed.
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 TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. Almost Wonderful Time of the Year TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.  So, last week, the producers of TMI: Hollywood decided to try and put together a Christmas show. It's one of the troupe's annual traditions and they've been having so much fun and success doing TMI: Daily on Zoom, it seemed like a great way to get the cast together. When they made the announcement to the cast about doing new Christmas sketches, they made it sound like they had material. When I, as a writer, asked where the material was coming from, they said they were hoping the writers would submit. It was a two-day window, but I actually came up with two decent ideas, and despite the insanity of the day job, I was able to knock out the pages. Both skits are VERY pandemic related, so they (hopefully) won't have shelf life 'til next Christmas, so I'll be presenting them here. But, neither made the cut. I've been watching a lot of versions of A Christmas Carol this season, and reading about theater groups doing versions of it virtually, so the idea of the spirits' intervention as a Zoom conference call played out in my head nicely and flowed so easily onto the page. I hope you can see it and enjoy it! A Zoom Carol TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. Again, I'm really satisfied with this sketch. Back in that summer it had been mentioned to me, as I noted in the forward of the skit, Politics is unpredictable. Like, did you ever notice that the mayor in "Jaws" is still the mayor in "Jaws 2?" How’d that happen? It was something my son-in-law pointed out to me and it started to flesh itself out into a sketch over time, a perfect Halloween/Election Day combo that seems more common now as horror and politics have gotten more intertwined. Sure, there's a couple of typos and I left the name "Watt" in one place after I changed it to "Carla." So many Jaws Easter eggs in it. And it had some decent bits for the woman in the cast. And some really good throw-away lines and the Abby & Grace characters came out of left field, but really work in this context. Alas, it wasn't produced, but I hope you'll enjoy it now. 1977 Amity Mayoral Debate TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. In 2018, we were watching a lot of unqualified people get nominated to a lot of important government jobs. The Kavanaugh hearings were very much in the news that autumn and it seemed like a good mix; Halloween and political humor. I was very happy with this sketch. I'm a fan of the Halloween movies and could really picture Jamie Lee Curtis playing the part. The length was good, it had a decent number of characters, each with a moment and it really flowed well. I thought I made a solid political parody without naming names but the gang didn't use it, so here we present.... Senate Halloween Hearings TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. I had a nice creative spark back in October 2018. A lot of inspiration for bits to submit. Some inspiration came from babysitting my grandkids. They were young and watching a LOT of Disney Jr. and other age-appropriate things. But after awhile, things like Vampirina and Netflix's Super Monsters started to grate on my old-school Universal-era horror movie fandom. So, this skit was born. I was really happy with it, it had a solid beginning, middle and end. I think I nailed the sit-com tone. I got to do some goofy jokes and vent on about "these kids today and their monsters." As for the group, it was an good-size cast, each character had a moment. Granted it wasn't super topical, but I thought it had a great show-business vibe that I thought the group would appreciate. I was disappointed it didn't get in for their Halloween show. You'd think I'd be used to disappointment by now, right? Disney’s Scary Thingies TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life. Sometimes you think of the perfect holiday sketch a week after the holiday. Well, thanks to modern technology, I can now write it up and mark in in my computer calendar so it will remind me to submit it next year. That's what happened here. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde parody popped into my head around Halloween 2017, but too late to submit it to the group. So I wrote it up and waited a 12 months. I really liked the flow, the characters, the internal logic of the premise; it was a joy writing it up. I only wished they had done it (womp, womp). Then I waited a year to post it here (at least I think I did. I checked the blog and couldn't find it. I couldn't remember if I posted it or decided to wait for Halloween). So, here is... Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Sobriety
TMI: Hollywood produces a live TOPICAL show each week, every Sunday. And by "every" we mean "many." Not everything submitted gets in. And not everything that gets rejected has a shelf life.  Sometimes my material isn't so much topical as locational. A couple ideas occurred to me while walking the dog; they were both Hollywood-related ideas. I think I had just seen a promo on TCM for a Jackie Cooper movie and it made me think of that old story of how they got Cooper to cry in movies; by saying his dog was dead. I just extrapolated from there to come up with this little ditty. TMI: Hollywood took a pass, but if TCM ever does a sketch show, I'm submitted this! Hollywood Director TMI: Hollywood started as a parody of all things Hollywood. Then they started dealing with the wider pop-culture. Now, politics has merged into pop-culture, so they are doing more political stuff. They try to limit it, or run issues through the Hollywood looking glass, which, face it, is very easy to do with Trump in the White House. We can all write "Trump is Stupid" gags until the cows come home (but we know, under this administration that a lot of cows won't be coming home) but how do handle news that hasn't been hammered to death by late-night shows, other comics and Twitter? It's tricky. And to put all that effort into a sketch that has a slim chance to make it (especially coming from an outsider on the wrong coast) is daunting. So here's what happens... Naturally, Press Secretary and Official Fibber was in the news during April, coming up with wacky explanations for her boss' wackier behavior. Also, ABC started running its ads for their summer game shows. There's "To Tell The Truth" right smack in the middle of things; how could I not? I learned from noted writer and late, lamented online friend John Boni that you can't just plop out a sketch or article or anything with just one note, so, sure, Sarah's a liar, so let's do variations on that. But I can go further by picking the right "celebrities" to question her and play around with the 2 other contestants. I think I had a nice mix of gags and zingers in this sketch. But, it didn't make the cut. So, we present... To Tell The Truth D.C. Edition The TMI season was coming to an end and I wanted to get one solid pop-culture bit out there. I was really struggling for an idea. Then we went to see Avengers: End Game. I was suddenly obsessed with the idea of a 3-hour movie with no intermission. A joke of amusing thoughts came to me to describe the situation, then I idea of a skit slowly started to form. Once the idea of a staff-Sargent-type life coach popped up, I started to assemble a bit about training people to make it through the movie. I got in some spoiler jokes, some end credit movie scene jokes and a lot of pee-pee jokes. It all came together nicely, although not nicely enough to get picked for the show. Oh, well, that's what blogs are for, right? Movie End Game |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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